Local author recalls time in Civil Rights-era South

Ivester’s memoir based on research, interviews

In the ’60s and ’70s, Jo Ivester’s parents chased trouble across the country.

They could have pleasantly whiled away their lives on the East Coast, where her father — a doctor — and her mother — a homemaker — initially settled down in a Boston suburb with their four children, Ivester said. But instead, Ivester’s father decided to uproot the family in 1967, transporting them to a town that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration had determined was within the poorest region of America — the cotton fields of Mississippi.

As her late father, Leon Kruger, fought poverty and prejudice by working for a free clinic in the town of Mound Bayou, Miss., her mother Aura, her two older brothers and 11-year-old Ivester not only witnessed the struggle against poverty and prejudice at that time, but became a part of the story, for better and for worse.

That’s the subject of Ivester’s new memoir that was published this year, “The Outskirts of Hope” — a line from Johnson’s speech in which he announced the launch of his War on Poverty.

As an adult, Ivester and her husband moved to West Lake Hills with their four children, all of whom graduated from Eanes schools. Ivester was an active volunteer in the schools and the community, and Aura Kruger, who passed away just under two years ago, lived with Ivester’s family for years.

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“Those of you who knew her (Kruger) in Austin knew her many years after our time in Mississippi, so you didn’t know the shy woman inside,” Ivester said at her book launch at BookPeople. “When she became a teacher, that’s when she became the strong, brave person we all know and love.”

Among other things, Ivester’s memoir charts her mother’s experience of stumbling into teaching at John F. Kennedy Memorial High School. Based on hours of conversations with her mother, Ivester wrote much of the book from her mother’s point of view — a woman who abashedly admitted that she struggled to understand and tell her students apart on the first day of class as an English teacher. But as she got to know them, Aura Kruger grew to love them, inspire them, spark discussions about poverty and racism with them, and assigned books by Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in her classes.

In her book, Ivester quoted a former student of Kruger’s who Ivester talked to in Mound Bayou 40 years later.

“She really cared about us and wanted us to do well,” James Farmer said. “She was always telling us to read and said we could do anything we wanted to, be anything we wanted to be. And she really believed that.”

Ivester relates her mother’s experience at a school assembly, which was called when the Krugers hurriedly decided to leave because the students were so upset.

Aura Kruger went on to spend 20 years teaching in inner-city schools in Miami and later South Central Los Angeles, Ivester said.

In her book, Ivester relates the childhood experiences she had in the town, major and minor, from participating in a Civil Rights march through town to baffling boys with her tomboyish, outgoing personality. She also relates a violent encounter with three boys and herself that ultimately led to the Krugers’ reluctant departure from Mound Bayou.

“In the mid-1960s, many people talked the talk about civil rights, but very few people walked the walk. Jo was one of these few. … Harper Lee could embellish things and change things around, but this was what really happened,” said Forrest Preece, who spoke at Ivester’s book launch.

Ivester said she wants to share her experience with as many people as possible.

“My feeling is that, by personalizing some of the history about racial relations, that it makes it easier for people to understand it and realize there are still problems,” Ivester said.